CULTURAL DIFFERENCES, EMERGENCIES & TEACHING SESSIONS

In the morning I sat in on the ‘on the day’ appointments with a registrar GP. It was really enlightening to see the variety of concerns that patients would come to the GP with as a matter of urgency. Some of them were less urgent and others were quite critical. One of the things that I noticed was that there was a lot of patients who came with concerns about depression. This was something I found really interesting as in my previous GP placement, mental health wasn’t even mentioned once. This allowed me to to reflect on cultural differences as the previous GP surgery was in a predominantly Asian area and this one was in a predominantly White area. This enabled me to understand the greater stigma of mental health within the Asian community.

One of the patient’s who came also had a hernia which the doctor had previously told him wasn’t obvious enough to oprate. I watched how the doctor conducted a physical examination and then made an emergency referral to the hospital to operate on his hernia. This allowed me to appreciate general practice as not a single entity but one which is in collaboration with many secondary care specialities.

In the afternoon, I engaged in some teaching sessions with student nurses. This was ran by a GP. I participated in some role play scenarios to see how healthcare staff should respond in the face of different emergencies.